Ankara (AFP) – US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he would use his old Air Force One plane to leave Turkey after a NATO summit, sending his new Qatari-gifted jet on ahead to Britain.
Trump said on his Truth Social network he was sending the new jet to Mildenhall airbase so that service members would have a “chance to tour the Aircraft.”
"Everybody is so excited, and we thought that they should be the first. For old time’s sake, we’ll be taking the former Air Force One, from Turkey,” Trump added.
But the switch from the new jet on its maiden foreign trip sparked speculation it was because its security features were lacking – particularly after Trump threatened fresh strikes against Iran, which borders Turkey.
Asked during a press conference whether the change was for security reasons related to Iran, Trump sidestepped the question by talking about previous alleged assassination attempts by Tehran.
“I speak about it a lot because the life of a president is very dangerous,” he said.
Pressed on why he wasn’t taking the new plane, Trump replied: “It’s flying to Europe to one of the big bases – two or three of the big bases – where we can show it to the people. And we’ll be going home by normal methods.”
Qatar’s royal family donated the 747-8 plane last year after Trump complained about the state of the two aging jets that have served as the US presidential plane since 1990.
The new plane was rapidly retrofitted and equipped with security features before making its first flight with Trump on July 1.
It features a new red, white and navy blue colour scheme in a change from the previous white and light blue livery.
Two brand new Boeing Air Force Ones are due to be delivered later this decade after a series of delays.
Critics have raised a host of ethical, constitutional and security concerns about the gifting of an aircraft worth hundreds of millions of dollars by a foreign power like Qatar.
Please, trickster gods, do the funniest thing ever.
In Loki, Coyote, and Joker’s name, we pray.
Navy blue… Interesting.
The whole purpose of the light blue belly is to make it blend into the sky from the ground… (and the white top is supposed to be to make it blend into clouds from overhead)
But hey, they want to make it a bigger target, I’m totally ok with that.
The color choices are literally just “this is the color of my suit and tie”. I wish I was making this up.
I think that color defense method might be a little out of date with modern sensors. Unless someone is targeting manually… hopefully.
Visual tracking as an initial targeting, or as a fallback, will be quite common. A manpad needs to know what it’s trying to track first. If you can delay acquisition by even a few seconds it will make a difference.
It would also be quite embarrassing if it got shot down because, while flares and countermeasures worked, it just flew towards the big shiny gold thing in the sky.
Even with modern heat sensors, you kind of have to know where to look to get the initial lock. It does make it harder.
With the rise in drones (especially tethered), the possibility of someone flying by sight alone is real.
Not sure the colour even matters. No way they gifted it free of trackers, bugs, cameras, etc.
It’s the ultimate Trojan horse of current times.
Probably.
Trump himself is the ultimate Trojan horse.
The plane hasn’t been vetted. You know as soon as it hits the tarmac the USAF and Boeing is going to strip that plane down to its rivets to make sure its safe/no listening devices/etc.
Then they harden it, EMP, all the comms, countermeasures, etc have to go in. Honestly I would take the plane and swap it for an off the line Boeing just to be polite. It would save a ton of labor and take all doubts on its pedigree.
Or just not accept an obvious bribe from a cruel and thoroughly corrupt feudal state altogether. That is an option.
The orange clown already flew on it, right? Flew to Turkey.
Are you saying that they hadn’t done this work yet?
